This one was drawn by  ViceXXX as a little going away present for Wildstar. The servers shut down today. While it's sad, it's not going to be the end of my chars. While I'll be moving on to another game, my insatiable aliens will just keep guzzling down everyone they can get their hands on. <3 Thank you WIldstar for giving me a place to play...and introducing me to some wonderful new species!

Nexus was always a hunting ground. The planet was created artificially, meant as a giant experiment by the near-gods of the universe. Whatever their purpose, they brought the fiercest wildlife from around the galaxy and altered them to be even more vicious and cunning. Sentient species were created as well, things to test and thrive in this hostile environment. Long before any 'civilized' race set foot on the world, it was chaos.

Then war came. Two ideologically opposed sides arrived on the world and fought over its vast technology and resources. With them came smaller criminal factions and various sides looking to capitalize on the chaos and potential of the world. Nexus became a proper war zone, but full of more than just soldiers. Eager scientists, settlers and seekers of fortune arrived to try and find answers or a place in the universe that could be all theirs.

These naive souls were just prey in the hunting grounds. Many were prey in a less literal sense, as the planet had more dangers than anywhere in the universe...but in such an untamed world, it was easy for those civilized souls to forget that the law of the jungle still applied in such an untamed world. Eat or be eaten. And while many settlers on the world had tried to keep their humanity, other migrants had embraced the world's primal ways.

Marauders were space pirates. Raiders, slavers, they were a sort who took what they wanted, even if it was a person. Chua were chaotic, science obsessed rodents who would often cause destruction for little other than amusement. Two members of two very violent factions might not agree on politics, but they certainly agree on one thing. Nexus is their plaything.

These two seem to share a hobby. Perhaps they came across a group of traders, likely the smaller cousins of the Lopp on the left. Or perhaps they found few settlers and decided to give them a very different home than the group intended. In truth, it doesn't matter what those wiggly bulges used to be. No amount of muffled pleas or sobs is going to free them from their prison. In fact, their struggles only seem to be amusing the gluttonous monsters.

The pair will likely taunt their meals for a while. They'll remind them where they are and what's going to happen to them. They'll insist the doomed morsels will make wonderful fat and they'll be stuck wobbling there for eternity. Any pleas and sobs will be laughed at and all those struggles will just be a blissful belly rub from the inside. It won't last forever. Soon enough those bellies will do what bellies tend to. The unfortunate souls within will break down and become part of their predators. More creatures lost to the dangers of Nexus.

At least they'll live on as a part of those that claimed them. Many on Nexus simply end up as bones in the sun. These lost pilgrims were fuel for the engine of the food chain, the primal order that had been running on Nexus since it began. Perhaps it's not how they wanted to go, but everyone who comes to Nexus knows its dangers. It's a wild, untamed world full of danger, destruction and monsters of all sorts.

And despite the politics of Nexus, not all monsters want to kill you for your ideology, kill you for profit or kill you for any 'civilized' reason. Some are just hungry. And you fit inside.